| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北教育大學 === 幼兒與家庭教育學系碩士班 === 97 === The objective of this study is to investigate the types of stories as well as the contents and the structures of self-composed stories told by 12 Atayal children in a kindergarten class affiliated to an elementary school in Northern Taiwan.
The researcher visited the kindergarten class 15 times from 14th September 2007 to 13th November 2008. The researcher invited the children to tell stories after they woke up from the afternoon nap. Altogether, 154 stories were collected from these children. These stories were then categorized into 4 types of stories, including self-composed stories, personal experience stories, stories of personal experiences with imaginary elements and stories told with a picture book in hand. Among these four types of stories, self-composed stories amount the most. The contents of these self-composed stories were then analyzed further. The aspects examined include the way every story got started and ended, the subject matter, characters, setting and plot. The above aspects were then examined more carefully one by one. From the second examination, sub-categories were constructed and the percentage of each sub-category was tallied. The results of the analysis are as follows:
1.The way the story started and ended: Most of the stories started by referring a specific time, and most of them ended with a clear declaration that the story has come to an end.
2.Subject matter：Most of the stories were derived from parts of other stories. The children made extensions of a certain character or an episode. The next frequently used subject matter was personal life experiences.
3.Character: The majority of the characters were realistic, such as family members, of which siblings appeared most frequently. Other characters include animals and fictional characters.
4.Setting: realistic sceneries (natural landscapes, such as mountains and forests) were most frequently chosen as settings of the stories. What amounted the next was household.
5.Plot: There were three distinct characteristics of plot composition, including realistic episodes, dialogues, and using a problem to start the story.
It was found that the contents of the stories were influenced by the surrounding environment, daily life (after school and vacation) and the school curriculum.
Regarding the story structures, Gee’s stanza analysis approach was adapted to analyze these 154 stories. There were four types of story structures: 1) unrelated incidents, 2) structurally complete single incident with few details, 3) sophisticated structures with rich details, and 4) recurrent structures.
Lastly, the researcher compares the results with prior researches on children’s stories and stated the limitations of this study.
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